Peter ClaridgeAn Expat Living in India2015-01-13T04:28:00Zhttp://peterclaridge.com/feed/atom/WordPressadminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=16662015-01-13T04:28:00Z2015-01-08T03:28:28ZFor the last three years I’ve spent my Christmas in Chennai. Each year we went back to the Taj Connemara for their Christmas brunch, which is pretty good with all the turkey, roast vegetables, pigs in blankets and so on, but to do it again for a fourth year. Just no. Not again.

I told my wife that I couldn’t do a fourth year in Chennai. I didn’t care where we went, but we had to get out of the city. Fortunately she agreed and rather more fortunately, she works for the Hilton, so we fired up the staff rates website, filtered for South East Asia – and then sorted from Low to High. Yeah, whatever, don’t judge me.

Colombo, Sri Lanka topped the list of cheapest places to stay. We ignored it. So yes, apparently I did care a little bit about where we went. Sri Lanka is basically India, right?

We scrolled through to the more interesting destinations like Singapore, Bangkok, Bali, Malaysia and Indonesia, all wonderful places where we could spend a fantastic Christmas. However after checking the flight costs to these countries we realized that it wasn’t going to be the quick and cheap getaway we had hoped for.

Doing all kinds of crazy hacks and tricks on the airline sites didn’t yield any results, the flights were still expensive. Air Asia kept touting 3,000 Rupee tickets to various Asian cities but damned if I could find the one flight where they were actually offering tickets at that price.

We regrouped and looked at the list again. Colombo called out from the top of the list, it sounded a lot like snickering. It knew that it was all we could afford.

If you didn’t pick up it already, Colombo wasn’t my first choice of places to spend Christmas. A beach resort in Bali? Yes. Christmas in Singapore, one of the most metropolitan city states in the world? Absolutely. Christmas in Bangkok? Why hell yeah! Colombo…hmm, isn’t it owned by the Chinese or something?

It turned out that the executive chef at Hilton Colombo used to work at Hilton Chennai. He is British which meant my expectations for a quality Christmas dinner were suddenly raised to Christmas-dinner-cooked-by-my-Mum levels, and that was all I needed to start looking forward to the trip.

Landing at Colombo Airport was like landing at Heathrow in the summer. It was pouring with rain. Sri Lanka asks all tourists to register for a travel permit online prior to arrival, something that the airlines seem to conveniently forget about.

If you come from one of the western countries you are charged $25 for the pleasure. From India? That’ll be just $15 please and thank you for topping up our foreign reserves account.

When you get to arrivals it becomes a little bit more apparent why the airlines forget to tell you about the travel permit requirement. Westerners, being westerners, clearly think that it’s visa on arrival in Sri Lanka. It’s not, it’s a slap on the wrist and a small fine on arrival but go on you little scamp, go and enjoy the country and don’t forget, Sri Lanka accepts dollars!

After booking our pre-paid non-a/c taxi, the driver loaded us in to a large mini van big enough to seat seven people. “Why don’t you want air conditioning?” he asked, we’re from Chennai we replied. We didn’t need to say anymore, we got a look from him that basically said “oh, you poor things.”

I was expecting many things from Colombo. Mostly I was expecting it to be like Chennai, it’s only an hours flight away after all and Coimbatore or Madurai are basically like mini-Chennais.

What I didn’t expect was a brand spanking new motorway to take us out of the airport towards Colombo. It was so new that someone had forgotten to tell the locals about it because it was empty. There was also a distinct lack of autos and motorbikes driving the towards the oncoming traffic, no people looking to kill themselves by crossing the motorway and shhh, listen…no car horns.

Hang on a second. I don’t think Sri Lanka is like India. What gives?

The two lane motorway snaked its way through the country side. The signs were British in style and written in English, the road markings were very British, the crash barriers were British in style, hell even the landscaping around the intersections were very British. When did Sri Lanka become Great Britain? What happened to China?

“There will be terrible traffic.” the taxi driver told us as we neared the city. We slumped in our seats, it was getting late and we wanted the perfect Serenity beds of the Hilton. And beer.

The terrible traffic turned out to be three cars, a bus and a couple of autos…which are correctly called tuk-tuks in Sri Lanka. India, please take note.

Wait, rewind, the three cars were all Toyota Prii (holy cow, Toyota actually had to do a survey to find out what the plural of Prius was…surely they should have known having invented the word?). Hybrids in Sri Lanka? Are we now in San Francisco? Why doesn’t India have any hybrids?

The Hilton Colombo can be described in one word: Spectacular.

As we pulled in to the driveway, fairy lights gleamed from the landscaped grounds. In the lobby a gingerbread house had been crafted, giving off the unmistakable aroma of Christmas. In the bar a live acappella band was in full swing belting out Do They Know it’s Christmas Time (I do! I do!), Winter Wonderland, Rocking Around The Christmas Tree and the old tear jerker, Silent Night. It was finally beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Feet tapping, beer in hand, the Serenity bed had been relegated to the bottom of my list of things to do that evening. At the bar I ordered a beef burger because, well, I wasn’t in Chennai any more. Oh to eat such good beef after a long time. Thank you, Chef Daniel!

It wasn’t long before the aforementioned Chef Daniel turned up at the bar. He’s British and from Manchester so it was to be expected. He had an older gentleman in tow so while he went off to see to his kitchens and chit chat with the guests, I struck up a conversation with his friend.

I say conversation but that might be stretching the truth somewhat. A train wreck might have been more appropriate. I later had to apologize to my wife on behalf of all British people for the behaviour of this person.

This gentleman, it turned out, had had a very interesting life, working in all the popular tourist spots in the world like Libya, Iraq, Lebonan, Iran, Burma and of course Sri Lanka. To say he was opinionated about certain things would be like saying the Pope had some thoughts about the whole God thing.

It wasn’t long, maybe just three or four margaritas actually, before he felt he could confide in me that everyone in Sri Lanka was, and I quote “fucking good for nothing lazy morons.” I say confided, but the whole bar heard him telling me how awful Sri Lankans were, ranking them only slightly lower than the “bloody Indians, but at least they work hard” in his list of world’s worst people.

It was at this point that I suddenly had intimate knowledge of what goes on in the mind of a rabbit caught in the headlights. My beer glass froze halfway from the table to my mouth. My brain was replaying what it had just thought it had heard.

Everyone in the bar was staring at us. Knifes were probably being sharpened. If this was a saloon in the wild west, the plinky plonky piano would have stopped playing, there would be the sound of chairs being scraped back and guns being cocked. Someone would then say “you callin’ me yella?” before violently killing us.

My wife, using her womenly intuition, had earlier excused herself to “go to the bathroom” when in fact she had made a beeline for the room, which in hindsight is probably what I should have done. But we all know women are smarter than us men.

I tried in vain to get the gentleman to talk about his admittedly interesting life doing engineering projects in all the developing nations. It didn’t work.

When Chef Daniel came back, the gentleman took a turn for the worse, which I didn’t think was possible. He started laying in to the bar staff about how terrible the margaritas were, telling them that they were all useless and that he’ll get them all fired. He demanded drink after drink, insisting that each one was worse than the last, with the chef getting increasingly agitated with each minute. In short, it was getting tense and I found myself looking for exit routes.

As the chef and the gentleman were arguing about how the staff couldn’t make the perfect margarita I saw my opportunity to bail. I said the first of my apologies on behalf of all British people to the waiting staff, and went to find my Serenity bed. And to say sorry to my wife.

It turns out that Christmas Day in Colombo is a lot like Christmas Day in England. Wet and miserable. It was perfect. As I threw open the curtains in the morning, this was the view that greeted me.

We decided to step outside for a bit and work up an appetite for the Christmas lunch that was about to follow. Way back in the day, a British chap decided that the sea front of the city would be complete with a promenade and esplanade like the English sea side towns that he clearly missed.

It was along this promenade that we walked. The attention that my wife received as she walked in her dress was zero, which was in sharp contrast to when she wore the same dress the other week in Chennai and damn near caused carnage on the roads as drivers rubber necked to see the bare naked calves of a woman.

The promenade had plenty of little stalls which sold snacks and soft drinks, but what was most striking was the complete lack of rubbish and litter that these places produced. The entire beach front was free of litter and bins were actually being used. Compare that with India where tourist spots are magnets for litter.

We had been in Sri Lanka for just 18 hours, but already it had seduced my wife. The complete lack of attention she received from the men, the lack of car horns on the road, how well maintained the place was not to mention the pristine pavements that are in sharp contrast to the sad excuses for pavements in Chennai.

Personally, Colombo already won me over with the beef burger and local Lion beer from the night before, but then I’m a little bit easier to please.

Christmas dinner turned out to be everything that I had hoped for. By that I mean there were pigs in blankets, brussel sprouts crunched and to top it off, real Christmas pudding with actual brandy butter. Heaven. Everything else was secondary. The turkey was perfect, there was fantastic roast veggies and more Lion beer came on tap.

Post lunch, and after a cheeky nap to let the body process all the bland British goodness, we headed over to Chef Daniel’s apartment having received a personal invite the night before. By this time the rain had turned from an English drizzle to a torrential tropical downpour and we turned up at his house looking like a pair of drowned rats.

No problem though, champagne was free flowing in this expat house as was the beer. Christmas abroad is always an interesting time because expats from all over the world come together and this party was no different.

There were Russians, Germans, Italians, Dutch, Americans, Venezuelans, Spanish, Nicaraguans, Indonesians, Sri Lankans and of course the British all getting merry.

I learned from many expats that Sri Lanka is referred to as India Lite.

It made perfect sense. It’s got the same climate as India, it’s a developing nation like India, it shares a lot of culture with colonialism, Buddism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism like India, it’s got great food like India. But it’s not quite like India. If India is the full bodied, red labeled Coca-Cola, Sri Lanka is the Diet Coca-Cola version.

Chef Daniel was the perfect host thanks to his aversion to anyone holding an empty glass. Kids were running around like mad hatters being, well, kids. Nineties indie music blasted from the stereo and took me back to my teenage years.

In the early evening Christmas Dinner part two was laid out, all created by Hilton Colombo’s executive chef. It was so awesome. More turkey, more roast veggies and even Yorkshire pudding, which required a lot of explaining to
non-British people on why it wasn’t a dessert.

More beer and champagne flowed, more classic tunes from the nineties played and more people got completely confused about what I did for a job.

It really was a great Christmas, one that will always be remembered. Thanks, Sri Lanka and sorry for thinking you’ll be exactly like India!

]]>0adminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=16552014-11-03T08:33:10Z2014-10-27T05:14:48ZTovo is a fairly new restaurant in Chennai on RK Salai just opposite the Woodlands and Savera hotels. I had the opportunity to check it out one Sunday evening with my wife and our friends. I didn’t read any reviews about the place before hand, I just knew that it was vaguely related to fusion food – whatever that means.

Having dined there, I can tell you that what it actually offers is chicken and it’s basically Indian version of Nandos.

Plenty of effort has gone in to branding and outfitting the restaurant. When you walk in you get the feeling that it’s a quality establishment with a serious amount of capital injected to make it work. Surprisingly then, the food costs were quite a lot lower than I was expecting.

The menu isn’t extensive by any means and this is probably a good thing because at first we were all quite confused by what we should be ordering. As it turns out you’ve got 4 main options:

1. A quarter, half or whole chicken
2. A regular chicken wrap or a spicy chicken wrap
3. A chicken burger
4. A couple of south Indian dishes like Dosa

To add to the confusion, Tovo calls wraps as ‘flaps’ (which just sounds oh so wrong) and burgers as ‘buns’. It feels like it’s trying so hard to be different and elevate its brand but the reality is that it falls short as it hasn’t quite nailed it.

With your main dish selected, you then add additional toppings (which are spices, not actually toppings), sauces and seasonings (which adds to the confusion because they don’t mean salt and pepper but how spicy you want it to be).

To begin with we ordered the chicken kebab starter along with the veggie kebab. Originally we were told that no oil was used in the cooking of the chicken but it was clear when the starters came that they were bathed in oil. Upon questioning it the waiter admitted that actually oil is used for the starters.

The chicken really was tasty with all the herbs, spices and marinades doing their job perfectly. However, in a sign of things to come, the veggies kebabs we ordered at the same time took another 5 minutes to arrive. The veggie kebabs were on the spicy side and not everyone in the group could eat them, including my vegetarian wife who was waiting while the rest of us carnivores devoured the chicken.

The waiter then came back to the table to take the main course order. This is where we realized why the menu was kept simple. It took forever for the waiter to take everyone’s order because there were so many combinations of main dish, toppings, spices and seasonings. It then takes 25 minutes to prepare the main dishes.

Twenty minutes later two chicken burgers arrived on the table with a promise from the waiter that the others were getting ready. Another 5 minutes later two wraps (or flaps as Tovo has named them) turned up. Another 5 minutes went by and the veggie wrap arrived while the people who were served first were now finishing their meal and there were still two people left to serve.

As we waited for the last people to be served, the veggie in the group (my wife) had discovered that the filling in the wrap was the same as the veggie kebab starter she had ordered earlier. This led to some smart ass (it may have been me) pointing out that the chicken burgers everyone was eating also had the same filling as the chicken kebab starter. Anyway, it turned out that even on Tovo’s low spice setting (which they call seasoning) it was too spicy for her so she gave up and ordered the chocolate pudding surprise to try and salvage what had so far been a disastrous meal out.

Eventually, after the others had finished their wraps and burgers the final two plates came. I had opted for the burger with a low spice setting yet it still brought me out in the sweats. No doubt it was tasty, but given the amount of mayonnaise, it made a mockery of the idea that no oil was used. The burgers and wraps don’t come with any sides but unless you have a huge appetite this shouldn’t be a problem as the main dishes are very filling.

When the chocolate pudding surprise did finally arrive it was certainly a surprise to everyone. Expecting some sponge cake or choco lava type thing, it was actually four scoops of ice cream and some crunchy nut sauce – costing the same as a chicken wrap.

For seven people the bill came to Rs 3,650 which worked out to Rs 550 each which I think was very reasonable – I was expecting it to be a lot more. As mentioned the main dishes are very well priced at around 280 rupees, but the sides and starter are also around 250 while the four scoops of ice cream dessert was 220, so you know where Tovo is making the money.

Tovo is clearly a restaurant for meat eaters and spice lovers. Vegetarians like my wife will probably be thoroughly miserable eating here as will people with a low tolerance for spice.

The setting and ambiance of the restaurant is fantastic, the prices of the main dishes are very good and the food is also very good if you can handle the spice. On the flip side, there are a few things that definitely need to be improved on. More veggie options is one, less spicy options is a second, some way to stream line the order process, especially for larger groups, is a third, and bringing the meals together would be helpful.

There are also small things, like it seems they are trying too hard to be cool and unique on the menu. When the restaurant has paid so much attention to the food and decor, the menu (and their Facebook page) seems like an after thought as it’s riddled with spelling errors, sentence case errors and in some cases getting the names of dishes completely wrong, it’s a small thing of course but as a restaurant that wants to project an upmarket, foodie image, why open yourself to ridicule?

Would we go back? I think my wife would say absolutely not due to the spice and lack of veggie options. Would I go back? Well the spice level, even on the low setting, was on my threshold of tolerance, so if someone was organizing to go there as a group I wouldn’t protest but I probably wouldn’t suggest it as an option if it was down to me or if I was to meet a friend somewhere for dinner. This is personal preference of course and while some people in our group were equally annoyed at the order process and time it took for the food to arrive, they really liked the spicy food.

]]>0adminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=16372014-09-08T18:04:02Z2014-09-07T18:59:54Z“Meuw, meuw, meuw, meuw, meuw” came a squeaking noise from the bushes.

“Hey, it’s a little kitten!” my wife exclaimed. “Are you sure? It sounds more like a high pitch chirp from a bird” I replied, confident in my avian chirp recognition. A motorbike zoomed past, its headlight briefly illuminated the bush and silhouetted a tiny black kitten not more than a few weeks old. It punched a big hole in my bird argument so I let it slide.

For the last year my wife and I have been walking/running in the evenings when the temperature gets down to a bearable level. We kid ourselves that it’s to get some exercise in our otherwise sedentary lifestyles, but really I think it’s because we’re both animal people at heart. Almost every street in Chennai will have its local street dogs and cats and the dogs in particular can become quite friendly once they get to know you.

By now we’ve probably gained some notoriety with the locals as the oddball couple who want to adopt every dog and cat in sight. A few months ago a litter of ginger kittens appeared next door and the locals couldn’t believe how much interest we showed in them every day, even going as far as taking videos and photos, it was hilarious for the locals, this couple losing their mind on a bunch of kittens.

These kittens were born next door to us earlier this year

In the poorer areas, people tend to sit outside and chat, in the posher areas night-watchmen, in the twilight of their lives, sit outside the apartments on chairs taking it all in. They all watch on in mild amusement as we pet the dogs or try to coax a scared cat out of hiding. We’ve even gone as far as buying dried cat food to win the affection of the local moggies which probably means there’s no hope left for us.

Sometimes I think these locals vie for ringside seats as the nightly entertainment begins: what will this weird couple do next?! There are many times when cats have chased us down the road meowing at the top of their lungs and at the same time trying to prevent the other cats from reaching us. Other times we have to creep by certain houses because we know the local dog will cheerfully follow us all the way home. It must be hugely comical to the onlookers; we should probably start charging.

“Can you pick her up?” my wife asked “She sounds terrified and is probably starving.” Another motorbike sped past giving a few seconds of illumination to a shaking black ball of fur. I stepped up closer to the bush. Behind us there was the sound of chairs scraping across the asphalt as the night-watchmen realized the evening show was about to begin and they needed to get a better view. As delicately as I could but with all the grace and subtly of a charging bull elephant I pushed in to the bushes, the squeaking, already loud, ratcheted up a few notches in volume and intensity. “I think you need to get to the other side in case she runs that way” I whispered.

My wife got in to position like a veteran wicket keeper, crouched down, hands waiting to catch the kitten, should she run that way. Another motorbike approached and lit up the bushes, “I’ve nearly got her!” but as the motorbike passed, the kitten seized the opportunity and bolted past me and in to an even bigger bush, still squeaking but now unseen, she had found her safe place. Somewhat deflated, we left some food and headed off to tend to our other street pets. I mean carry on with our exercise.

Honestly, we thought that would be the last we saw of her. She was three weeks old, four at the most. She wasn’t going to take on the street dogs for food and rodents would be bigger than she was.

The next evening was a wild one. A monsoon storm had parked itself over Chennai and it was having blast. Sheet lightning, crashing thunder, howling winds, rain so heavy it seemed to be coming in every direction at once. It wasn’t a night that any normal person would want to be out.

“Shall we go for…a walk?” my wife suggested at the usual time. “Err, isn’t it raining?” My wife looked outside, “No, it’s stopped. Almost. Do you think the little black kitten will still be there?” she asked, hope in her voice. “Doubtful,” I replied, “you really want to go out in this to check on the kitten?” “Err, no, but I don’t think we should skip our exercise, we don’t do anything else do we?!” No dear.

“Wait!” cried the watchman as we walked downstairs “You can’t go out, it’s raining and flooded!” My wife was about to explain to him how important is was that we got our daily exercise when we heard a squeaking sound.

“Meuw, meuw, meuw, meuw” it was coming from just outside the apartment under a bunch of broken furniture. “Another bird?” my wife asked me sarcastically. “Are you a magnet for kittens or what?” I shot back, “let’s find it.” We grabbed a torch from the watchman and couldn’t believe it: It was the same kitten from last night. Somehow she had walked across several streets and ended up outside our apartment at the exact time we were going for a walk. It might have been a good time to believe in fate.

While my wife distracted her from the front, I went around the back and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and the squeaking stopped instantly. She weighed barely anything and was soaked through but was vibrating like crazy with fear or cold.

“What can we do with her?!” My wife asked as she cradled her in one hand and pinched her scruff with the other, “She’s so scared!” The watchman, possibly not hired for his intellectual prowess, had an idea “Wait here!” he said and ran back inside the apartment. When he returned moments later we could see what his bright idea was: to lead an unneutered ginger tom cat to the kitten. The reaction from the tom was as expected. we’ll probably never know what the watchman thought was going to happen, that the tom would be overcome with paternal emotion and adopt her as his own? The moment he smelled the kitten his back arched and he started hissing like a snake. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I shouted and whipped out the cat food and rushed to cut him off.

Fortunately the tom cat’s stomach was more important to him than anything else, a trait my wife tells me is common among all males. He forgot all about the kitten and blindly followed me back in to the apartment complex.

“OK, but what are we going to do with her?” my wife asked again when I got back. It was a loaded question.

The kitten was only quiet when her scruff was being pinched, the moment you let go she started shrieking again. Still, we couldn’t hold her neck all night long. “Let me see if I can find a box.” It didn’t answer the question of course, but it delayed making a decision. With a surprising amount of resourcefulness, I located a vegetable box from the grocer next door, “give it back when you’re done with it” he said, which should have made me wonder a little harder about how many other kittens or animals have found temporary shelter in his vegetable boxes and then were returned to their original purpose. “Give it some milk” he called out as I left, I’m not sure if he was hoping to make one last late night sale or if really no one in the street knew how to look after a kitten.

“OK, but what are we going to do with her?” my wife asked again. It appeared I had to make one of those husbandly decisions. “Let’s take her upstairs, dry her off, feed her, give her some water and then figure it out”. We took her upstairs and laid down some food, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a cat make a noise when it eats, but this one sounded exactly like “neow neow neow noew *pause* neow noew neow neow” as she wolfed down the Whiskas. “I think we’ll call you socks.” declared my wife as she scratched the kitten behind the ears.

After a few minutes the kitten’s hunger was satiated and she went back to being the terrified wreck she was before. She raced around the apartment, franticly looking in to every nook and cranny to hide before eventually settling under the coffee table where she watched us suspiciously. Eventually the meuwing subsided to the occasional squeak.

Socks making plenty of noise inside the house

“So, what are we going to do with her?” it was time to face the question. We couldn’t keep her of course, my wife and I had been over this time and again.

The first time was when my brother-in-law turned up at our door with great big grin on his face and a labrador puppy in a cardboard box. He’d bought us a puppy as our wedding gift and was well pleased with himself. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to give back an adorable fluffy labrador puppy but it doesn’t go so well. People judge you. However, we both agreed that it would be unfair on any animal to keep them in the apartment all day, especially when we’re both out at work and don’t have anyone who can look after the pet whenever we go away.

“How about we cover the box with food and water inside and leave it on the balcony overnight, it’ll be much safer than out in the street and we can get Blue Cross to pick her up tomorrow.” The idea was shot down, the kitten’s wailing would surely keep us awake and who would hand the kitten over, can the watchman be trusted.

“I think,” said my wife, coming to a decision “we need to take her now.” “But it’s 11 in the night!” I protested “They won’t even be open and if someone was there surely they wouldn’t open up for a stray kitten?!”

As we argued it over, the kitten had decided that she was no longer in mortal danger. She came out from under the coffee table and cautiously approach my wife, we put down some more food and she gobbled it up. Slowly she started getting her confidence back and was rediscovering how to kitten. A frantic need to hide was replaced by curiosity that only young cats can possess. Suddenly everything needed to be investigated, sniffed and patted all at once. There was no more wailing now and she quickly learned that every time she came near us she got a bit more food. My wife scooped her up with little protest from the kitten, even the shaking had stopped now.

A thought occurred to me “Hey, how do we know she’s a she?” my wife investigated “Oh!” she exclaimed “That figures, Socks is a boy! No wonder he’s becoming all hyper active and boisterous now.” She put him down and he went to investigate the table cloth where he discovered that he could jump up, dig his claws in and start swinging from the fabric. Yep, Socks was a boy.

I looked at my wife who was watching Socks figure out how to climb the back of the sofa, there was a dangerous look in her eye. “Hey, here’s my phone, can you call the taxi?” I asked quickly. We lined the vegetable box with newspaper, put in some food and placed Socks, who had so far climbed half way up the sofa, inside before wrapping the box in an old table cloth. Socks went in to immediate freak out mode trying to escape.

Downstairs the watchman held the gate open for us, “Where are you going at this time of night?” he enquired, “To the animal rescue shelter to drop off the kitten.” He couldn’t quite process that, what a crazy couple, he must have thought. The taxi driver eyed the wrapped box suspiciously, “it’s a fish tank?” he asked hopefully, I’m sure he wasn’t thrilled about the idea of having a scared animal in his car, “no” my wife explained “we found this stray kitten and we’re taking him to the rescue shelter” the reaction of the driver was a mirror image of the watchman, all this for a kitten, what nut jobs!

I was expecting Socks to scream blue murder in the car so I don’t know if it was the darkness or the a/c but as the car started he quickly settled down and was quiet as a mouse. It was a long drive to the Blue Cross shelter and I expected every bump and car horn to freak him out but he was fine…almost until we reached the shelter in fact. About five minutes away I felt him moving around again, a quiet shuffling, nothing frantic, then, a few seconds later the first pungent wave hit, my wife smelt it as well “Socks!” she said under her breath, as I nonchantly rolled down the window. It didn’t take long for the driver to notice the smell either, I was expecting him to complain but to his credit he just shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Sorry!” I said, because I’m British.

The driver had a new urgency to reach the shelter now and it was a relief to turn up at the gates – which were chained shut, it was 11:45 at night after all. We had spoken about this, what if no one was there to take him in? “err, hello?” I called out, “hello?!” I tried again, louder this time, there was the sound of movement from beyond the gates and a watchman appeared. “I’ve got an abandoned kitten” I told him, and on cue Socks let out one of his squeaks. “Wait here” he said, as if we were going to rush the gates to force them to take a kitten. A few minutes later he returned with the night manager, “yes?” he asked, “we have a kitten, he’s been abandoned” I told him. “Is he injured?” “No, just scared and hungry, we’ve watched him the last couple of days, he’s alone”. The manager was doing some thinking, probably along the lines of “oh my days why has this foreigner come and woken me up for a kitten who’s perfectly fine” but he didn’t say anything, just asked the watchman to unlock the gate while he quickly inspected the animal.

“You need to sign one of these release forms” he said, of course, this is India, paperwork is needed for everything, I was surprised they didn’t ask for passport photos as well, maybe the paperwork wasn’t that important.

With Socks officially signed over to the care and duty of Blue Cross we said our goodbyes and headed back home, silently. Our watchman was still awake, waiting for us to return, the forty minutes we were away had given him time to process what had just happened. “You are both very good people, no one here will hire a taxi in the middle of the night to take an animal to the rescue shelter,” he said, “God will bless you both.” It was a simple statement and neither of us are particular about seeking any Gods’ blessings, but it made us feel a lot better about what we had just done.

About Blue Cross of India

Blue Cross is Chennai’s largest animal rescue and shelter organization, similar to the RSPCA in the UK. It picks up injured or mistreated animals from rabbits to horses and will provide shelter for abandoned new born animals. It encourages the adoption of rescue and orphaned animals over buying from breeders.

]]>0adminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=15932014-04-10T07:23:46Z2014-04-09T06:24:39ZI’m absolutely fascinated by the Indian general elections, there is so much controversy, so much colour, so much hatred and so much passion from all sides.

Unlike the UK, where the major parties have sort of morphed in to one giant bubble that is either marginally centre-left or centre-right but basically the same, India has over a 1,600 parties at the last count.

These parties represent everything from castes to languages to religions (although it shouldn’t be explicitly stated in the name of the party) to workforces to states to regions within states to marginalised sections of society (there’s even one for the runaway lovers) and finally to political beliefs – although that’s not always necessary.

Generally what’s required is for someone to feel aggrieved and oppressed, find a bunch of people who also want to feel aggrieved and oppressed about the same thing and then form a political party that states that its members are aggrieved and oppressed by the people or party currently in power.

This year the elections have become even more fascinating because there is a huge amount of anti-incumbency sentiment surrounding the current coalition – with the Congress party in particular drawing the bulk of the resentment. The BJP, being the only other capable national party, thought it would sweep to power unhindered, but now there is an upstart party called the AAP (that literally expands to “The Common Man’s Party”) which has more than a few politicians worryingly looking over their shoulders and making contingency plans.

Added to this are the multitude of state level parties which have decided not to tie up with any national party and will possibly play a role in being the kingmaker come results day. This will give them some nice ministries to head up, much like the DMK’s A. Raja did for the Telecoms Ministry a few years back.

Traditionally, Indians will tell you that they love to talk politics, and believe me, it’s oh so true. Mention the ‘p’ word and you’ll have countless tales of how this politician or that party needs to be removed from power.

However, when it comes to actually voting, the urban middle class was always found to be missing. The parties understand that the way to power is to please the masses, and the masses live in hundreds of thousands of villages across rural India. Political parties will give away freebies like food grinders, 14 inch colour TVs, desk fans and more – not to the middle class, but to everyone else who actually decides the elections.

I was curious whether this time around, would things will be different? Had the middle class had enough? Was it finally time for them to walk the walk after talking about what’s wrong with this country day and night for the last five years?

To find out I conducted a utterly unscientific survey of friends, colleagues and acquaintances whom I’ve met in my 6 years here. They represent the (mostly) young, urban working professionals – the future of the nation, if you will.

Gender Ratio

I don’t think this was really relevant to the survey, but since I was asking young (ish) working professionals, mostly from the tech and marketing worlds, it does show a massively skewed gender ratio.

So here we are with the questions

1. Will you be voting in the forthcoming elections?

It was very interesting for me to see so many people saying that they would vote. Many of the people who said No felt the need to qualify why they wouldn’t vote with a lot of them living away from the constituency in which they were born.

What I also found interesting was while I asked the question, a handful of people wanted to tell me that they were ‘voting’ for Narendra Modi. For those of you who don’t know, Narendra Modi is the Prime Ministerial candidate for the BJP party. No one said they were voting for the BJP, they said they were voting for Modi.

This also brings up the curious question of whether people are so swept up with the Modi wave (that the media likes to call it), do they have any idea about the MP they are actually voting for – or do they even know they are not actually voting for Modi but for someone else who will nominate Modi as the Prime Minister?

Update 10th March: It was pointed out to me that even QZ did an article on how young people are voting for politicians rather than the policies they represent.

The only other response of note was from the poor person who looked blankly at me and asked “what election?” before declaring, at the age of 20, that they were too young to vote anyway. The voting age in India is 18.

Personally I think it’s misguided. People will already have made up their minds who they will vote for and tend not to follow a party they won’t vote for. The election is so polarising that there cannot be too many undecided voters. Added to this, it’s the large national parties that are making the most noise, the state parties and smaller local parties know that ground roots work pays bigger dividends with the masses that actually vote.

That said, one respondent, Krish, co-founder at Chargebee, said that he didn’t follow politicians but did follow influencers, and specifically mentioned Mahesh Murthy. He felt that influencers are playing a bigger role in getting the message of the political parties across to the social media users than the parties themselves.

3. What is the single biggest challenge for a Government of India to solve?

I’ll be honest and say I think I already knew the answer to this question. Corruption is on the minds of everyone. However, I didn’t want to skew the results so I didn’t give anyone a list to choose from, I simply asked them for whatever was top of their mind.

I didn’t expect the range of issues that were raised. Interestingly, only one person, Nidhi Bhasin, said national security was an issue which was surprising since the media has raised so much fuss about Chinese incursions in the last year.

(note: Accountability means Political Accountability – so many politicians get elected but never actually attend parliamentary sessions or have any accountability on what they’ve actually done – which is probably the same the world over!)

Here’s the full infographic, if you’ve got any thoughts or want to add your answers to this survey, please leave a comment below!

Thanks for reading! Please share your thoughts in the comments below, I’d love to hear what you have to say!

]]>2adminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=42014-03-10T05:47:27Z2014-03-04T07:24:17ZTaxi services. Little has changed in the last 50 years. You call up the taxi company, ask for a taxi to pick you up and you wait patiently for them to arrive.

Only it’s not always that simple in Chennai, especially for a foreigner (although I consider myself more of an almost-PIO nowadays).

You call up the call-centre, wait patiently to be connected to an operator, explain where you want to be picked up from, explain where you want to go, request the car type, listen to stupid special offers and finally, the taxi is booked. Then the fun really begins. Under normal circumstances, the driver calls you up 30 – 60 minutes before hand to know from where he needs to pick you up.

This will forever be a mystery to me because you’ve just told the call-centre where you want to be picked up from so how hard can it be to pass this on to the driver? Based on experience, it’s apparently impossible to do.

Taking the time to be the wingman to the hapless driver as you guide him in can be a mild inconvenience in the evening, but if you’ve got a 7am flight to catch, getting a 4:30am phonecall isn’t really what you need – unless you’re the type of person who takes an hour to get ready.

The biggest problem is that explaining the directions to a local driver is nigh on impossible for a foreigner in Chennai. Locals barely see more success. It doesn’t matter if the conversation is in English or Tamil, it always goes a little something like this…

We are in T-Nagar, no tee, tuh, not dee. No T-Nagar, like Pothys and Saravana stores. Yes, Pothys, no no, wait I don’t want you to come to Pothys. T-Nagar, yes, near to Gardenia Hotel…Gar-den-ia, err, oh, the old name is Empire Residency, ok? Good. After Gardenia Hotel…what? Yes Empire Residency, take the third right next to the bike garage, then keep going until you reach the chicken shop and take the next left after that and find the Homely Nest apartment block which is opposite the flower lady. How much time?

It’s always five minutes, so there’s no point in asking. There will be an exchange of three or four more calls as the driver iterates his way ever closer until finally you get the call that he is there and would you mind awfully hurrying up.

Even when you are not the one trying to give the directions, it’s still utterly exhausting just listening in on someone being the wingman. This is why I’m so happy that Chennai has gone Uber over the last month.

Uber is an American company looking to radically change the way we book taxis and give you awesome rides in Mercs, Jags and Beemers for a fraction of the price. Having ubered (yes, I’m verbalizing Uber, move on) to the office a few times and used the service to get around the city, let me tell you: it rocks!

Instead of spending countless phonecalls explaining your location, Uber uses this amazing piece of technology called GPS, which everyone in the world knows about except Chennai taxi companies.

You fire up the Uber app (available on Android and also some fruity phone) and GPS (or cell phone tower triangulation if you are inside) locates your exact position in the city.

Of course, if you want to have a different pick up point, you just move the pin to location you want. The process does assume some degree of map reading ability, but I’m not here to point fingers.

Once the pin is set, you can then see the location of all the available Uber cars in the city (err, zoom out if you see no cars) and it tells you how long you need to wait to get your driver (Uber doesn’t call them cabs). If you are happy with everything you tap the confirm button and the driver is alerted.

Now here’s the clever part, Uber drivers are not given fare meters. Wait? What? Shock! Horror! Instead they are given an iPhone with – wait for it – GPS! Hhomygod. Srsly? The innovation we can do nowadays with 40 year old technology, it clearly baffles the minds of Chennai’s current crop of taxi companies.

The location of the pick up (ie. you) is marked on the driver’s map so they simply drive to the pin and you are told exactly how many minutes away the car is on your phone.

Once picked up, a quick tap on the driver’s phone app tells Uber that the meter has started and GPS tracks the route along with the time.

Now after the base fare of Rs 50 (with a Rs 100 minimum fare), Uber charges just 15 rupees per km which is really cheap compared to the other taxis in the city, even compared to autos! There is a small catch though, they charge 2 rupees per minute so if you are gridlocked at Gemini Flyover or at the Tidel Park junction, you might feel the pinch, but hey, you’re in a frickking Jag so quit your whining already.

The pricing structure means I can take a Mercedes car home from office and pay less than what I would for an Indigo from NTL. Clearly there are massive cost savings from not having a call centre and all the staff that are required to run it 24 hours a day. If I was any of the traditional taxi companies I would be petrified of my business becoming irrelevant like, right now.

At the end of the journey, the driver taps his app again and the meter is stopped. There is no exchange of money, your credit card (which you entered earlier) is charged automatically and off you go on your happy little way.

For corporates, a full email invoice is sent with the route shown on a map, the number of minutes used and the distance travelled. For data nerds like myself it’s a little bit of nirvana from your ride home.

Uber Chennai is finally a taxi service that any expat can use and at a price point that beats regular taxis.

Hello Uber, good bye NTL, Milliondots, Fastrack (and Calltrack, and Taxitrack, and Metrotrack, and every other taxi service in Chennai that thinks ‘track’ means taxi or something).

There are of course a few limitations with the service. Uber is an on-demand service. You can’t pre-book a taxi to pick you up at a specific time and there are no package deals available. In addition, during times of great demand, like after Dublin or Pasha kicks out on a Saturday night, Uber employs what’s known as price surging where the fare can be double or triple the normal cost (you are informed about this before hand though).

Shameless plug: Listen in, if you want to try out Uber for yourself, use this promo code when you book your first Uber and you’ll get Rs 300 credited to your account: 4sk9w (I also get Rs 300 credited to my account if you use it, just so you know!).

]]>1adminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=14912014-03-09T08:50:47Z2012-08-09T08:46:49ZTo my utter surprise, I’m coming up to completing five years of living in India. Being an expat usually means you are paid more than the local workers, and India’s strict foreigner employment laws almost guarantees that.

One of the things about living in a developing country is that there is incessant, non-stop, almost frantic, growth all around you. Go to any city in India and it’s a maze of glass cladded buildings that are going up or buildings that are earmarked for demolition to make way for a bigger, fancier shopping mall than the previous one.

Growth of this kind helps a lot of people. One thing all upper middle class and some middle-middle class families have is a maid. Some even have drivers. But as one co-worker commented: the luxury of having home help is going to come to an end very soon. The 40 year old maid that you employ has saved every last rupee to send her children to an engineering college; there’s no way those kids will be sweeping floors or driving cars for the middle classes.

The antithesis of growth is inflation. The sworn enemy of the middle class. As fast as wealth can be accumulated, inflation is there to take it all back again. In developed countries, people talk about inflation rates of 3% ruining the middle classes. In India, the official inflation rate is around 8%. In reality, I suspect it is far higher.

For the first few years in India, inflation didn’t even come up on my radar. A few rupees here, a few rupees there, it was barely noticeable. To me, inflation was something that got the daily wage workers and unions upset. There would be a strike or two, but the middle classes could suck it up and carry on. After all, what’s a few hundred extra rupees when you are earning Rs 40,000 (£465 / $745) a month?

Now it’s a different matter though. Even on a salary like mine, inflation has caught up with me. It’s something you see happening month on month. I do a monthly shop at the local supermarket. This time last year I spent around Rs 4,000 (£46 / $74) for the shop. My latest shop cost Rs 5,650 (£66 / $105) – buying exactly the same stuff. Milk has risen from 30 rupees to 62 rupees. A carton of juice has gone from 49 rupees to 99 rupees. Cornflakes from 125 rupees to 200 rupees.

It’s got to the point where the prices they print on the packaging are already out of date by the time they wind up on the shelves. Waiting in line at the checkouts takes longer now because every other item needs a price override to bump it up by another 5 or 10 rupees. Every month the price is going up, it’s inflation that hits you every time.

And yes, before I get flamed, I know spending £66 / $105 per month on groceries is laughably low compared to a developed country (the average UK grocery bill is about £144 for one person – apparently). What isn’t funny, and what developed countries haven’t seen, is the 40% inflation on food prices in the last year alone. I never used to look at prices in the supermarket before, it was all cheap so what was the point. Now it’s got to the point where I’m being a little bit more careful about what I buy.

Electricity prices is another area where inflation has crept up and made me gasp for breath. The other day, the latest electricity bill was waiting for me in my letterbox. For the same period last year, it cost me Rs 1,250 for 630 units. This year, I used virtually the same amount of units (yay!), but the price is now Rs 2,600. Again, it’s not much when you compare it to developed countries, but as I recently pointed out on Facebook, this is a staggering 115% inflation we’re talking about here.

To add salt in to the inflation inflicted wound, the state electricity board is only able to generate 70%-80% of the power required by the state. Remarkable, given that only a few years ago, the state was able to sell surplus power to other states in India. The result is that in Chennai we are now at a mandatory two hour power cut every day (it used to be one hour). Elsewhere in the state, it can be as much as 4 hours. So not only are we getting less power per day, we’re paying 115% more for it than we were this time last year.

I used to enjoy going out for lunch and dinner. It would cost about 300 rupees for lunch at the coffee shop and 800 rupees for dinner. Now lunch is around Rs 600 and dinner is a success if it comes in at less than Rs 1,400.

It’s got to the point now where restaurants have to republish their menus every six months to take in to account rising prices. I half dread seeing a new menu at my local restaurants because I know the prices will have gone up again.

To be frank, there is almost nothing India can do about inflation. Like any other country, it’s at the mercy of the international commodity and currency markets. The Indian oil companies alone are losing $36bn per year subsidizing fuel to try and keep a check on inflation. They can’t keep it up. When they run out of money – and they will very soon – petrol, diesel and LPG will have to rise to market prices, potentially triggering hyperinflation. Domestic LPG (used for gas cookers), for example, would have to double in price.

I’m not sure I want to be around when the fallout from inflation happens, because it won’t just be the daily wage workers and unions protesting on the street.

]]>0adminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=14762014-03-09T04:37:46Z2012-07-12T03:55:57ZI have almost reached the age now where doing the ‘smell test’ to see if a t-shirt is still wearable is frowned upon. If I wear a t-shirt, it should be fresh out of the cupboard and neatly pressed. Which is what happens most days.

Last night saw quite a big storm hit Chennai in only the second bit of rain we’ve had this year (jealous much, England?). The thunder isn’t like the wussy stuff you get in England which rumbles around like an old man, it’s the make you cover your ears and hide under the duvet thunder. Lightning does the very best job it can to rip the sky apart from the seams, probably doing to particles what it took humans $10bn and a Large Hadron Collider to do.

So around 5am this morning, my room started lighting up like an action sequence in a Spielberg sci fi movie and the thunder virtually knocked me out of bed. “3-2-1″ I said to myself and right on cue and almighty explosion (probably from the same action sequence) signaled that the transformer outside my apartment had blown up and my a/c promptly died. It’s raining, what do I need the a/c for, you might ask. Well, this is the tropics, it’s still 30Â°C outside and the rain just means the humidity is pushed up to 99%. Uncomfortable? You betcha.

Even by the morning, the power wasn’t back on which not only meant a cold shower (mmm, invigorating), but a return to days of yore by doing the ‘smell test’ to see if a crumpled up t-shirt was still wearable since I couldn’t iron anything. Colleagues are keeping their distance from me this morning, I can’t think why?

A pic from outside Taramani Station this morning after the storm hit last night

]]>2adminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=14532014-03-09T04:42:33Z2012-07-07T13:07:10ZIt is written in the ancient codes of FORTRAN that the geeks will inherit the earth, and now it seems we’ll also get all the pretty ladies too. According to a fellow geek, we make the perfect partner for the opposite sex. He goes on to say that we cherish loyalty, stability and once you’ve made it plainly obvious that there is an upcoming birthday/anniversary (and by obvious we mean emailing us the date and occasion two weeks in advance – seriously, that’s all we ask) we’ll draw upon super human Googling powers, gather data and create complex spreadsheets with advanced filters just to find that perfect gift. Disagreements and arguments will be few and far between too, because anything can be quickly solved by searching the Internet, and since we all have smartphones we can nullify disputes before they blow out of proportion. We can also do spontaneity, when given reasonable enough time to plan in advance.

Geek Love: 10 Reasons to Date a Geekhttp://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/03/04/geek-love-10-reasons-to-date-a-geek/Loyalty runs in our veins. If a geek can be so loyal to their favourite gadget manufacturer, operating system, TV show, movies, fantasy heroes and so on, imagine what happensâ€¦

]]>0adminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=14582014-03-09T04:42:36Z2012-07-05T13:05:02ZAlcohol is quite a contentious issue in India for a number of social, political and religious reasons. Some states go as far as outright banning it, others, like Goa, take a more laid back approach. Both policies bring their own set of problems. Mumbai has taken the decision to force anyone who wants to go to a bar to get a permit from the police which has to be shown each time you buy a drink.

Chennai, a deeply conservative city, has had a love-hate relationship with the stuff. Successive governments first restrict the licensing laws to much fanfare before quietly relaxing them later on.

Today, after firstly restricting the sale of alcohol in the state, the ruling party allowed the licensing hours to be extended to 12 midnight for some places and completely relaxed to 24 hours for 5 star hotels in the city, giving customers to opportunity to get a drink any time they feel like it.

Now, I’m not sure whether to feel a great sense of pride or rapidly go and check myself in to the nearest Alcoholics Anonymous group because this afternoon I get phone calls from two different hotels inviting me to come and enjoy extended drinking hours at their respective bars!

]]>0adminhttp://peterclaridge.com/?p=14362014-03-09T04:42:38Z2012-06-27T04:05:17ZEvery morning I have to take the train to south Chennai. The Mass Rapid Transit System, or MRTS as it’s known, is a marvel in concrete. Soviet Russia style concrete monolithic stations are dotted every few KM and are so brutal in design, it would make Joseph Stalin himself give a nod of approval. Rather surprisingly, it’s also a triumph of punctuality and reliabilty too, something Network Rail would do well to study. Trains that actually run on time? How can it be?! The MRTS gets a lot of flack from the media and the local population but actually I think it’s pretty bloody fantastic for what it is.

Since the elevated track runs along about 4 stories high, the plan was to use the first level of the stations as a car park for commuters and the 2nd and 3rd level as huge shopping malls, like the big stations of London. That was the plan. 10 years later and many of the stations still resemble building sites with scaffolding and construction detritus littered around the platforms. Where the thriving shops were supposed to be are instead cavernous halls, serving as shelter to dogs, goats and the occasional cow, the odd homeless person and not to mention a place for hapless souls to drink away their troubles in the cold darkness.

This photo shows the station where I catch my train. If you turn up before 8:30am then the platform is virtually empty like it is here and the journey is relatively pleasant. After 8:30am is when Chennai goes to work and 6m people mobilize at once…the journey is then pretty far from pleasant!